


Alternative to Adjusting

by alesca_munroe



Series: Kingdom Hearts: Keyblade Princess [3]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, all the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2263191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alesca_munroe/pseuds/alesca_munroe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fuu doesn't adjust to being back.  Seifer realises this.</p>
<p>post-everything, no real spoilers</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alternative to Adjusting

**Author's Note:**

> After the end of the AU. We really weren't kidding about posting work out of order, because that's largely how our thought process works
> 
> For artwork and more: http://khdivergence.tumblr.com/

Fuu doesn't adjust to being back.  She doesn't say it, but Seifer isn't posse leader for nothing.  He knows his people and he knows when something is wrong.

The town is still recovering from the attacks.  Through his bedroom window, Seifer can see the train station and the work being done to repair the tracks.  Rai works there when he isn't with the posse, and even if the cast is finally off Seifer's leg, no one will let him do any of the heavy lifting.  "Gotta heal, y'know?" Rai had said and Fuu had just glared pointedly until Seifer conceded.  Instead, he helps make and bring food to the displaced people of the town.  Hayner comes with him sometimes.  His own gang never settles on doing just one thing, which is par for the course.  It seems that their ability to annoy him is the only thing that hasn't changed.

The townspeople are only so resilient and it's not reasonable for Seifer to expect them to bounce back from Twilight Town being a twice-former battlefield.  Laguna was a host of other things before ever was a journalist, and is able to help the worst cases.  Seifer treats people the same way he always does and while Olette gives him dirty looks for needling Hayner, Pence pulled Seifer aside once to thank him.  He said Hayner slept better after days when he worked with Seifer.  Seifer dismissed it, trying not to think of the lightning shaped scar on Hayner's face and how seeing it makes him fiercely angry, makes him want to push Hayner to be stronger, to keep anyone from ever hurting him again.  Makes him almost think of Hayner as posse, except the posse has always only been Seifer and Fuu and Rai.

Fuu slides back into her place in the posse and the town.  Tries to, but they're all different now, herself more than most.  It's like she's too big for her skin, for her home.  She has faster reflexes and Seifer knows just by looking at her that she can take him easily. The cast has been off his leg for a week and they're not letting him so much as look at a Struggle bat, but he means that she can take him at the top of his game.  She wouldn't, but her time with the Keyblade Princess and the little nunchaku wielder (Selphie, Seifer remembers, but Fuu almost never says her name, which means she was- is important to Fuu) made her different, less likely to just do as Seifer says.  It chafed at first, but Seifer has pride in his posse, in that Rai is a survivor and Fuu is strong enough never to need to defer to anyone.  Not even to Seifer.

Seifer is self-aware enough to know he's being selfish by keeping her at his side and aims to do something about it.  So one day, after he sees Rai off to the train station and watching Fuu talk to some of the more emotionally scarred women (she doesn't need to do or say much, but when she does, it makes a world of difference), Seifer goes over to Laguna.  The journalist nods a cheerful hello, but there is never again going to be hiding behind his empty headed façade.  Not around Seifer.  "You're here about Fuu," Laguna prompts and does not offer Seifer a seat.  Doesn't treat him like he's broken, and maybe Laguna is an ally more than Seifer thought.

He nods.  "I need your help."

~~~

A week of work passes before Rai settles next to Seifer on a bench at the train station.  It's just after lunch, which is always the time Seifer comes to see him.  "The physical therapy looks like it's helping," Rai says, tentatively because Seifer hates _hates_ being viewed as weak. 

"I'm healing, not weak," Seifer replies, but only a little grumpily.  Selphie had none-too-gently whacked Seifer in the shoulder before she and the Princess left the last time and told him there was a big difference between 'weak' and 'healing' and she would knock some sense into him the literal way if he didn't get it straight.  He's been trying to focus on that when the therapy gets tough or the reconstruction effort needs help that he can't yet give.  He'd give his town just short of everything.  He'd go father for his posse.  He know he's going to have to.

Rai nods.  After a while, he says,  "Fuu ain't happy here, y'know?"

"Yeah." He'd wondered if Rai was ever going to say anything about it.

Another nod.  "So what are we going to do about it?"

This is the hard part.  "You know she'll never be happy staying here, right?"

Rai meets Seifer's eyes.  He looks a little sad and s little helpless, but that shifts to resolve.  "So we let her go."

Seifer looks out over the reconstruction.  He tells Rai what Laguna is helping him do.  Saying it out loud hurts every bit as much as Seifer expected, makes it more real.  Rai's voice is raw when he says he'll help.  They don't get up until Fuu comes looking for them for dinner.

~~

In the second week, Fuu corners Seifer.  "Posse," she says flatly, a question and a reassurance and a confirmation rolled into one.

The work is nearly finished, just a few more final tweaks that Laguna assures Seifer is for safety and "not just to make it look cool." Seifer hasn't seen Fuu much in the last four days and, realising this, feels guilty.  He drags up his usual smirk and nods.  "Posse," he agrees, and for the next three days the disciplinary committee stick together.  Seifer savors each moment, committing it all to memory.  If Fuu notices anything strange, she doesn't say so.

After three weeks, Seifer and Rai show Fuu the secret.  "We named it Balamb," Seifer tells Fuu as she stares in shock.  "Rai's idea.  Laguna says it should work just as well as it did when it brought him to Twilight Town all those years back." Fuu puts a hand to the shiny side of the gummi ship for a moment before clenching her hand into a fist and whirling on them.  "Home!" she snaps.

"You're not happy, Fuu," Rai points out calmly, like he wasn't sniveling when Laguna declares the project finished.  Seifer will never admit to getting choked up either, and so doesn't mention Rai's moment.  "We want you to be happy, even if it's not here, y'know?"

Fuu blinks rapidly.  "Posse," she says, and this time it's a question.

"You'll always be ours, no matter what," Seifer replies and the fierceness of his tone nearly surprises him, except these are his friends, his posse, and fierce is really the only way to describe how he feels about them.  "There's just other people besides us who you love, and who love you."

The girl smiles, and it's only a little wobbly.  "Love."

"'Course we love you," Rai says like it's obvious, and maybe it is.

"Doesn't mean you can go getting weak on us," Seifer warns.  He points at Fuu.  "You stay strong enough to be on the disciplinary committee no matter what, you got that?"

Fuu grabs both of the boys into a hug.  "Impermanent," she assures them and something in Seifer eases because how could he be so foolish as to think Fuu would never come back?  Gummi travel isn't a one-way trip.  And even if Balamb breaks down, Fuu know people out there who will help her fix it or give her a ride.

When Fuu lets go, Seifer puts his smirk back on.  "Hey," he says when she turns to get into the ship.  "When you get back, we're gonna spar, you hear me?"

Fuu grins and waves her chakram at him before disappearing into the ship.  Seifer and Rai watch the ship until it's gone from the sky, and Laguna magnanimously says nothing about any feelings that may or may not be all over their faces.  "You're welcome anytime, boys," he says and Seifer knows he means for company, for sparring, for anything they might need.  He's walked away and let people walk away, too.  There's no one in town who will understand them quite as well.

Seifer goes to the Sandlot while Rai heads off to home.  Hayner is alone in the ring.  "Hey," Hayner says when he sees Seifer.  "Doc said you can go back to sparring, right?"

In response, Seifer picks up a bat and tosses another to Hayner.  Hayner grins, bright and unabashed, and stretches out his side, the one where the broken ribs are finally healed as of the past week.  The scar that stretches from temple to jaw is no longer as stark, but never will it entirely fade away.  But Hayner is still smiling.  He, like Rai, like Fuu, like Seifer himself, is a survivor.

"Three, two, one... go!"

**Author's Note:**

> Hayner was scarred in the same attack that broke Seifer's leg. The scar is shaped like Zell's tattoo because I'm unashamedly on the bandwagon of people who think Hayner is the Zell of Kingdom Hearts


End file.
